Date: 1937

"Make [her mind], as a garden gay, / Every bud of thought display, / Till, improving year by year, / The whole culture shall appear,"

— Philips, Ambrose (1674-1749)

Date: 1938

"Listen, kids who die-- / Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you / Except in our hearts / Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp / Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field, / Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht / But the day will come-- / Your are sure yourselves that it is...

— Hughes, Langston (1902-1967))

Date: 1940

"The provinces of his body revolted, / The squares of his mind were empty, / Silence invaded the suburbs, / The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers."

— Auden, W. H. (1907-1973)

Date: 1940

"In the deserts of the heart / Let the healing fountain start."

— Auden, W. H. (1907-1973)

Date: 1942

"The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind, / If one may say so."

— Stevens, Wallace (1879-1955)

Date: 1942

"I shall keep them [my thoughts] to myself for a time, and when I am older / They will shine as a white worm shines under a green boulder."

— Smith, Stevie (1902-1971)

Date: December, 1942

"Do we act or do we think / when years roll round on a barber's pole, / when what is red is white is pink, / which is body which is soul?"

— Smith, William Jay (1918-2015)

Date: 1946

"Icebergs behoove the soul / (both being self-made from elements least visible) / to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible."

— Bishop, Elizabeth (1911-1979)

Date: 1946

"his brain appears, throned in "fantastic triumph," / and shines through his hat / with jeweled works at work at intermeshing crowns, / lamé with lights."

— Bishop, Elizabeth (1911-1979)

Date: 1946

"Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie / his rushing brain."

— Bishop, Elizabeth (1911-1979)